An other question is, if you route it, what kind of humbuckers will come in? Orig. 50ies PAF's? Or some good clones (wizz, ox4, ecp etc)? In this case you would get equal pups to the 50ies wood. Especialy for real PAF it maybe would be ok to "sacrifice" the axe because you would still keep the real deal tone. I never heard of P90 sized humbuckers equal to paf's or good clones. So does it make sense to put avarage to bad sounding humbuckers in a 50ies axe? Imo it would be tonally a downgrade. So my advice is keep it as it is...or if you desperatly want humbuckers then do it right and put some real paf's in it.

All the "Les Paul did it" talk doesn't seem relevant to me. He wasn't doing it to guitars that were considered rare, valuable, parts of history at the time. He was doing the equivalent of my routing out an Agile Valkyrie (modern $99/used guitar) to be a quick and rough pickup swapping and experimenting platform.

All the "Les Paul did it" talk doesn't seem relevant to me. He wasn't doing it to guitars that were considered rare, valuable, parts of history at the time. He was doing the equivalent of my routing out an Agile Valkyrie (modern $99/used guitar) to be a quick and rough pickup swapping and experimenting platform.

Clearly I don't know you or the guitar and have no right to tell you what to do, except to say that you asked...... But for godsake don't do it. Sell the guitar and get a humbucker ready modified vintage LP....I get that it's (been) broken (and repaired) but you're killing (what's left of) the value of the guitar. Plus those P90s are worth some money and should sound killer if they are original or at least period correct. I have 3 vintage Gibson guitars and 3 modern reissues with P90s and they ALL sound different and all of them have TONE. I would bet that most people couldn't tell the difference between my p90 guitars and a humbucker guitar. - rant over.....